Megacorps organize and finance the Reconstruction, managing to
extort special privileges and extraterritoriality from governments.
Across the globe, the middle-classes now trust corporations and
clans (intercontinentals) 2-to-1 over governments.

The global network-of-networks is rebuilt form the ground up
utilizing hardened self-organizing (auto-poeitic) hardware
and special genetic algorithms. The final form resembles the
human immune system, with major arteries, free-floating antibodies,
porous and semi-porous membranes and other features. The
resilience of the new webwork is said to make another Netcrash
impossible.

The American States of Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Nebraska,
N & S Dakota, Nevada, Wyoming, and Idaho declare themselves
freeholds and estate zones, becoming practically autonomous.
Land is franchised or sold to thousands of corps and clans.

American government enlists the aid of rural Peace Militias to
restore order in large cities. The resulting 'redneck rampage'
causes such bloodshed that many cities declare themselves
freeholds to escape Federal jurisdiction.

Pentagon establishment is purged and many generals are convicted
of war-crimes in Asia. It later becomes known that President
Haldeman engineered most of the trials to destroy his opponents
within the US Armed Forces.

European Union fractures into conurbation city-states such as
Provence, Barcelona, Milan and Ruhr. These regions join together
to form the European Conference, the third pillar of the EU.
The new EC becomes the Senate for Europe, with Senators elected
to represent contiguous ethnic regions.

Organ vats and illegal genegineering labs develop in free zones
such as Pusan, Sicily and Seattle.

New plastics and alloys allow for the development of simple
cyber/bio-implants in people. Initial reaction is muted, as most
people begin to fear biological innovations of any kind.

Japan closes its borders to foreigners and retrenches into an
isolationist paranoia. Most Japanese multinationals 'emigrate' to
new homelands in Asia and America.

An underground cipherpunk network called Undernet quickly transforms
into the world's most secure illegal information channel, providing
samizdata to subversive activists and criminal syndicates alike.
Working in cell-structures, untraceable distributed networks, and
state-of-the-art encryption, Undernet is impossible to infiltrate
or eliminate.

In America, the Apparatus helps President Haldeman squash
congressional opposition. The Directory, a secret shadow cabinet
of Haldeman's friends, begins to control several government
departments. Congressional powers are slowly weakened as power
accumulates with the Executive.